“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
— Edward R. Murrow
•••
No doubt the debate on George Bush’s presidency will go on for generations.

There are extremes on both sides of the argument. Many believe he was the greatest thing since sliced bread and would have quickly ushered him in for a third term if given the opportunity.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who feel he was the worst president in the history of our country. No doubt, you could find those who would be willing to make a similar case for anyone who had occupied the White House.

I’ll admit up front I was never, and am still not, a supporter of Bush, who recently flew into the sunset. As a student of political history and someone who sees no need to continue the electoral college, I say he lost the presidential election in 2000 simply because he lost the popular vote count to Al Gore.
(Numerous arguments have been made he actually lost the electoral vote, but he definitely lost the popular vote in 2000.)

Still, Bush was president for eight years and the point of this column is to examine those two terms he spent in the Oval Office. You hear the talking head conservatives who eat airtime on television and radio speak constantly of how 9-11 changed the world. Indeed it did.

However, it also pushed many Americans into a lazier role when it comes to personal liberties, which is where I have my biggest issues with Bush.

Americans, under no circumstances, should be willing to give up their personal rights, civil liberties or due processes. Doing so under the veil of security is certainly no excuse. In fact, it is perhaps the worst of all reasons.

A friend of mine is a long-time Republican. He and I have great political conversations. (As a note, I actually consider myself Libertarian although I am not a member of any party).

I asked him recently, how Republicans — who claim to be for less government — can defend a president who pushed through the Patriot Act, FISA bills, killed Habeas Corpus and would lock up American citizens indefinitely without benefit of a trial or even being told while they had been arrested, all in the name of “security.”

“Don’t all of these actions go against the smaller role of government principles that you promote?” I asked.

My friend, for one of the few times I’ve known, actually had no answer.

In reality, how can anyone, as an American, defense these actions? You don’t give up rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution because a President decides he is all-powerful and is all-knowing. It sets the most dangerous of precedents.

For years now our brave servicemen and servicewomen have been involved overseas making the ultimate sacrifice. Their families back home are sacrificing as well. Their fight goes on while the president who sent them there is now out of office living on the taxpayer’s dime even though the country we are fighting had nothing to do with 9-11. Their reward: to have their paychecks slashed.

Assaulting personal liberties, putting our servicemen and servicewomen in harm’s way for years on end, thumbing his nose at anyone who dares point out what he is doing is wrong, this past president should be remembered as the failure he was.

Chris Bridges is an editor with Mainstreet Newspapers. E-mail comments about this column to chris@mainstreetnews.com.

I agree with the author of this article 100%.I might also add that if Senator McCain had been elected we would have still had a 95% BUSH presidency.....THINK ABOUT IT WE DID THE RIGHT THING ON EVERY LEVEL.

I would appreciate documentation of your assertions that Pres. Bush killed habeas corpus, locked up American citizens indefinitely and more. If you refer to Guantanamo, then perhaps you could delineate how the inmates were mistreated...a congressional delegation having learned that prisoner treatment was better than that afforded guards.

By your own admission you loathe even the memory of Pres. Bush as well as the country I love, the United States of America. This country is not a democracy but a representative republic. The founders had a profound wisdom that the uninformed citizens were too often incited to ill conceived action by events of the day. That we have strayed from the initial intent, that the people would elect representatives, the States would determine the Senators...people who would represent state interests, not necessarily the people with the exception that those senators would be moderately influenced by the people changing the state government, and the President was to be chosen by the electoral college. This model was defined precisely to eliminate the daily influence of the masses on the operation of government.

To eliminate the electoral college would be to disenfranchise the majority of the states of these United States in the selection of the President. May you, and people like you, have no success in this matter.

Where in the world do the Idiots, I mean editors at Main Street News get the nerve to call themselves an fair reporting newspaper. One of the chief contributers or local political news is such a in the bag liberal that any attempt at unbiased and fair reporting is impossible. Since Chris Bridges is the only person allowed to contribute to the Opinion portion of this News orginizations site, it is only fair to assume that the Mainstreet News Banks County Edition is a Liberal Newsletter and not a Fair reporting News Outlet/Paper. It would be a nice change to see a contrary opinion, or at least a neutral opinion here once in a while and not a Liberal Attack Advertisment.

“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG
______________________
I am not sure where I had read it before, but anyway, it is a linguistically excellent statement, and it goes kind of like this: “If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Oh wait—off the top of my head—I think the quotation came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.

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